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Italian Casserole

April 15, 2009

Average:

4

Average: 4(5 votes)

Servings:

Makes 2-3 cups.

Absolutely delicious! I tossed this together on a creative whim as a take-to-school lunch for my companion, who is a middle school music teacher. I included a bag of celery sticks in case he felt like eating it as a dip.

1. Set sundried tomatoes and capers to soak.
2. Pit olives: cut them in half, then take out the pit.(Pits are good to suck on while working…))
3. In a food processor, chop the pine nuts into a coarse flour-like consistency. Set aside in small bowl.
4. Rinse, scrub and coarsely chop 1 yam to put into processor. In this order, process in the other ingredients, tasting regularly to fine tune the recipe to your own taste: garlic, red bell pepper, basil (if fresh), olives, capers, olive oil, oregano, basil (if dried), sundried tomatoes. Adjust to taste. If you want more salty, add more capers.
5. Presentation: Spoon into a bowl or onto a plate so it looks nice, and top with an even layer of the pine-nut flour prepared in step 1.
6. Slice the cherry tomatoes into coin-like shapes and arrange them on top and around the yam-mixture. Drizzle a little extra olive oil just over the tomatoes, and sprinkle the tiniest amount of sea-salt over them as well.
7. Garnish with fresh basil, parsely, arugula or whatever green you can find.

Dip: If you would prefer to eat it as a dip, try it with sweet-potato chips (a raw sweet potato cut into chip-like rounds) or celery sticks.

PS. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of this one. It was beautiful. And don’t we all know from experience that food tastes better when it looks good!